Windows Server 2008 Delivers Web-based Experiences

by Nick Pegley


plug itFor increased control of your servers, efficient management, and configured Web tasks, there's Windows PowerShell, Windows Server Manager and IIS7. eNetwork Access Protection and Read-Only Domain Controller protect and fortify the server environment, putting your business on a strong foundation.
Internet Info Services 7 simplifies management of Web services. As a modular platform with an interface based on tasks, better control, improved security, and Web service health management, the user connects to their information and to others using Info Server (IIS) 7.0 and .NET 3.0. Visualization, sharing and acting upon the information with this inclusive apps platform.

It's possible to virtualize multiple operating systems to one server to max out the value, and virtual capabilities are bundled with the operating system for more flexible licensing. Sever 2008 facilitates dynamic data centers to meet business needs. Optimized for remote access and integrated apps, Terminal Services' Gateway and RemoteApp apply secure app deployment and do not require a VPN (Virtual Private Network).

Sever 2008 does a great job creating a hard operating system with great security features including network access protection, rights management, and read-only domain control. Levels of security which were previously not possible are now available for your business network data, including defense against data failure and network intrusion.

Machines that disobey the company's security policies are isolated by Network Access Protection, which completes ongoing maintenance including checks of compliance and remediation. Sensitive information is persistently protected by Federated Rights Management Services to lower the risk and make compliance possible in a total info protection system. Read-Only Domain Controller deploys Active Directory Domain Services while disallowing copying of the entire data base for better defense against data compromise.

Windows Server 2008, the most robust and flexible OS available, comes with Server Core, Windows Deployment Services, PowerShell, and better clustering technology, providing the best reliability and flexibility for your needs. Faster setup and configuration is possible, as well as easy ongoing management with a unified management console.

PowerShell, a command-line shell with over one hundred tools, uses a script language that lets sysadmins make routine tasks fully automated across servers. The new installation option Server Core has only the required components to provide good server availability with less service updates - without using a graphical user interface.



About the Author
Nick Pegley is a marketing expert with All Covered: Technology Services Partner for Small Business, providing information technology consulting and IT services in 20 major U.S. metro areas. Outsource your procurement, installation and technical headaches.

What Is An Ip Address? Understanding Your Ip Address

by Gabriel Adams

plug itIP stands for Internet Protocol. The IP Address is a number that identifies a computer or router. In order for computers to communicate on a network or on the internet, each computer must be identified somehow, and this is done using private IP addresses (for local networks) and public IP addresses (for the internet).
An IP address, when it comes to the internet, is a number that represents your router. When you connect, this number sends commands out to another IP address to get information.

For example, when you visit a popular website (like Google), your computer doesn't actually send a request for google dot com. The real request that it sends is the IP address of Google's server.

The word-based website addresses (such as www dot whatever dot com) that we use are just there to make the internet more convenient and user-friendly to the average person. In reality, all websites are sending and receiving information using numerical addresses called IP addresses. DNS servers act as liaisons and convert word-based addresses into number-based IP addresses when you go online.

An IP address comprises four groups of numbers separated by a period (or dot or decimal point, whatever you want to call it). There are over 4.2 billion combinations of numbers that can create a unique IP address.

Two Main Types of IP Addresses

There are two main types of IP addresses you may encounter.

One is your private IP address, also known as a local IP address. This is the address that your computer and router use to communicate with each other inside your home.

Private IP addresses are not reachable from the outside world or the internet. The most common private IP address is 192.168.1.1. Most routers default to identifying themselves on your local network as either that address or 192.168.2.1.

A situation where one might need to know their private IP is when port forwarding. Certain online games and other online applications need to access ports on your local computer but a firewall prevents such port traffic.

To bypass this, there is a setting in your router called port forwarding, persistent port forwarding or tunneling wherein your router makes an exception and allows traffic on a certain specified port. The port must be forwarded from router to the local IP (private IP) of your particular computer in order for port-based applications to work.

The other main type of IP address is called a public IP. A public IP address is the one that your router uses to connect to the internet. One instance where a public IP address is important to know is when using a VPN (virtual private network) or VNC (virtual network computing) application.

VPN and VNC applications allow you to create a virtual network that functions just like your local network, with another computer somewhere on the internet (a friend or colleague's office or home, even far away, for example). VNC apps (such as RealVNC) also allow you to control another computer remotely. You can see its screen, control its keyboard and mouse functions and so on.

These applications would not be possible without the use of Public IP addresses for the main connection, and Private IP addresses for the port forwarding to your local computer.

If you do use an application where port forwarding is required, be sure that the port has been opened not only on your router's setup page (usually under security or gaming tabs) but also in your windows firewall. You'll also need to check your anti-virus, anti-spyware, and other similar programs to see if they block ports as well.

Public IP Addresses and Concerns about Privacy and Security

You'll also be interested to know that any activity you do online is traceable back to your Public IP address. This can be averted to some degree by using a proxy server to access the internet. However, no matter how private the internet feels when you are at home, it is a public place. Let your behavior online reflect this lack of true privacy!



About the Author
Want to learn more about your Ip Address? Find Ip Address and Ip Information at our website.

Why use VPN, Anonymizers, Proxy Servers ?

by Patrick Holm

Anonymizers are online services that eliminate the trail of information that you leave behind, whilst surfing, so that your online activities cannot be traced back to you. Web Anonymizers are special web sites that let you access other web sites while making it impossible for them to have any information about you. Anonymizers are a useful tool to ensure that identifying information is not transferred during online interactions in which no personal information need be revealed. Anonymizers are web-based services or downloadable programs that keep your Internet browsing anonymous. Anonymizers are Internet tools developed by the private sector to strip out personal information in order to protect user privacy.

Proxy Anonymizers In computer networks, a proxy server is a server (a computer system or an application program) which services the requests of its clients by forwarding requests to other servers. Using a proxy anonymizer is the most common method of anonymous surfing. A number of free proxy anonymizers use proxy servers from free, open, proxy lists. Many of these lists do indicate whether a proxy is anonymous or not, but sometimes they are not accurate or up-to-date. You will need to be aware that everything you do via these free proxies can be logged and used by the proxy administrators for their own interests and uses. Another problem is that malicious hackers (crackers) and spammers set up proxies in the free proxy lists and can use this source to integrate your computer or collect your personnel information to later send unsolicited emails to you. To anonymize ALL your connections, you will need to use an https proxy anonymizer -- commercial or free proxy anonymizers that use SSH or SSL encryption between the proxy server, website and your computer. Inevitably, by using commercial or free proxy anonymizers, you will have to expect a certain slowdown in your connection speeds. When using an http proxy anonymizer-- http is a standard, unsecured connection -- your IP will not be visible.

VPN connections:

A VPN anonymizer is a technology that establishes a private or secure network connection within a public network, such as the Internet. VPN or what are commonly known as VPN (Virtual Private Network) tunnels, are frequently used by corporations and government bodies, to allow remote workers to make secure internet connections to the office network. VPN is currently the most advanced form of anonymity and data security for use on the Internet. VPN users often have dynamic IP addresses and can have a different IP address with every connection that they make. The main difference between an SSL or SSH encrypted tunnel proxy and VPN (Virtual Private Network) tunnelling, is that VPN doesn't use a proxy and anonymizes and encrypts all activities. Both SSL and SSH encryption can be used with VPN as well as proxy servers.

Conclusion:

Most web-proxy services or anonymizers are not free, but many do offer partial service for free or a free trial period, which might work for you depending on what type of firewall your school or office uses. One of the most common uses for anonymizers is to unblock myspace, or unblock sites which are deemed unsuitable for viewer ship by local ISP (Internet Service Providers). After carrying out several tests on free proxy anonymizers versus paid VPN providers, I would recommend staying clear of the free proxy providers due to the dangers of using them and the generally poor data transfer speed and opt to pay for a strong VPN provider that will ensure quick and reliable performance. One of the best VPN providers to give you this is www.thenetgate.org.

Net Gate is a Secure VPN Messenger & VOIP internet service & community that enables users to access & interact with their social networks, through a totally secure VPN secured platform.




About the Author
Patrick Holm on behalf of www.thenetgate.org

Virtual Sales Community

by Negoish


Negoish.com has realized it's technological goals over many years of R&D to develop and implement turnkey business solutions on the web for your company, yourself, and your family. We are ready to increase your sales revenue by 50 in the P&L, budget, or small business space. The matrix is limitless for each client to maximize their resources, technology, marketing and sales for huge market share.

Negoish:UNIT v1.0 has been designed with unlimited webcentric scalability to be viewed as a vision of technological forward thinking. This outstanding "new" business model with twelve great men as the senior management team have created opportunities for very large f100 companies who are interested in launching "new" virtual sales projects, sales entrepreneurs who are thinking about "new" f500 virtual companies, sales management who are dreaming of "new" f1000 virtual clients and sales professionals who are hoping to get finished with sales quota and get home to their virtual home business on the beach, boat, or RV.

Negoish:WEB gives you a virtual interface directly through an internet, intranet and extranet [VPN] virtual private network between sales partners, sales alliances, and sales affiliates to support your every business need.

We perform at the highest level of genius knowledge and pedigree's from the government [lawman], military [intelman], legal [judge], scientific [technologist], financial [banker], information technology [motivator] and dealmaker [negoish].

Negoish:DIRECT provides customized hardware, software and services to integrate the hottest client/server configurations possible with the greatest [ROI] return on investment. Each user has his/her own private sales control panel to navigate their own independent business group in our virtual sales community.

Negoish:UNIT v1.0 provides on-line services with your user i.d. and password all the necessary template databases, documents, plans and lead generation software to facilitate any size deal for your clients. You have a team of tremendous leadership to back you from start to finish to generate "new" business for huge profits. You have realtime virtual capabilities to make full scale interactive voice, data, video and text presentations in a consultative mode for huge long term contract deals.

This webcentric turnkey business solution for sales partners, sales alliances and sales affiliates is extremely user friendly for virtual sales closers. You have a multi-interactive, multi-integrated, multi-tasking and multi-user platform with a host of unique, simple and fun sales tools to generate your team [QP] quota performance.

Each virtual dealmaker can use his/her capabilities in the sales process from start to finish with your customized sales control panel to market and sell "best of breed" technologies based on your own specialization plus our complete portfolio of assets for sparkling growth.

This could be exactly what you are looking for a "new" virtual business venture or a "new" virtual business project where all your marketing and sales related experience can be exploited and applied. You can focus on sales development and sales production opportunities to provide yourself shared equities, shared profits and shared benefits for your next success.

We use "state of the art" hardware, software and services that can be customized to your exact technical specifications. Integrate all your existing digital appliances to maximize your [RRS] Re-Ducing Recapitalization System combined with your [IPP] Independent Profit Plan for your wealth and prosperity.

We can assist you right now to determine if your ready to step forward into the world's first virtual sales community with our "free" evaluator and "free" tour integrated with your "free" consultation to help you make the big move into a virtual profit center.

Our Virtual Sales Community can protect you, can stimulate you, and can provide you with an opportunity for virtual transiNegoish.com has realized it's technological goals over many years of R&D to develop and implement turnkey business solutions on the web for your company, yourself, and your family. We are ready to increase your sales revenue by 50 in the P&L, budget, or small business space. The matrix is limitless for each client to maximize their resources, technology, marketing and sales for huge market share.

Negoish:UNIT v1.0 has been designed with unlimited webcentric scalability to be viewed as a vision of technological forward thinking. This outstanding "new" business model with twelve great men as the senior management team have created opportunities for very large f100 companies who are interested in launching "new" virtual sales projects, sales entrepreneurs who are thinking about "new" f500 virtual companies, sales management who are dreaming of "new" f1000 virtual clients and sales professionals who are hoping to get finished with sales quota and get home to their virtual home business on the beach, boat, or RV.

Negoish:WEB gives you a virtual interface directly through an internet, intranet and extranet [VPN] virtual private network between sales partners, sales alliances, and sales affiliates to support your every business need.

We perform at the highest level of genius knowledge and pedigree's from the government [lawman], military [intelman], legal [judge], scientific [technologist], financial [banker], information technology [motivator] and dealmaker [negoish].

Negoish:DIRECT provides customized hardware, software and services to integrate the hottest client/server configurations possible with the greatest [ROI] return on investment. Each user has his/her own private sales control panel to navigate their own independent business group in our virtual sales community.

Negoish:UNIT v1.0 provides on-line services with your user i.d. and password all the neccessary template databases, documents, plans and lead generation software to facilitate any size deal for your clients. You have a team of tremendous leadership to back you from start to finish to generate "new" business for huge profits. You have realtime virtual capabilities to make full scale interactive voice, data, video and text presentations in a consultative mode for huge long term contract deals.

This webcentric turnkey business solution for sales partners, sales alliances and sales affiliates is extremely user friendly for virtual sales closers. You have a multi-interactive, multi-integrated, multi-tasking and multi-user platform with a host of unique, simple and fun sales tools to generate your team [QP] quota performance.

Each virtual dealmaker can use his/her capabilities in the sales process from start to finish with your customized sales control panel to market and sell "best of breed" technologies based on your own specialization plus our complete portfolio of assets for sparkling growth.

This could be exactly what you are looking for a "new" virtual business venture or a "new" virtual business project where all your marketing and sales related experience can be exploited and applied. You can focus on sales development and sales production opportunities to provide yourself shared equities, shared profits and shared benefits for your next success.

We use "state of the art" hardware, software and services that can be customized to your exact technical specifications. Integrate all your existing digital appliances to maximize your [RRS] Re-Ducing Recapitalization System combined with your [IPP] Independent Profit Plan for your wealth and prosperity.

We can assist you right now to determine if your ready to step forward into the world's first virtual sales community with our "free" evaluator and "free" tour integrated with your "free" consultation to help you make the big move into a virtual profit center.

Our Virtual Sales Community can protect you, can stimulate you, and can provide you with an opportunity for virtual transistion for your most important sales related skills needed in the future.

What if it's all green being in a virtual sales community?

About the Author

Negoish has twenty five years experience in marketing and sales with f500 companies dealing with level "C" contacts from government, military and information technology in both profit and non-profit companies. He also has a vision of the future for young people and sales professionals making a difference.

Negoish http://www.Negoish.com ceo@negoish.com 610-966-1984

PPTP and HTTP Port Forwarding with Static NAT on a Cisco Router

by Don R. Crawley



Recently, a student at one of our seminars asked about port forwarding on a router. She wanted to allow PPTP clients to connect from the outside to a VPN server on the inside. In this article, I'll explain how to do it along with a quick look at using static NAT to forward packets to a web server.

Port Forwarding on a Cisco Router

Sometimes we have internal resources that need to be Internet-accessible such as Web servers, mail servers, or VPN servers. Generally, I recommend isolating those resources in a DMZ to protect your office LAN from the bad guys, but regardless of how you choose to design it, the process involves forwarding desired packets from the router's outside interface to an internal host. It's really a fairly simple process. Here's the configuration on a Cisco 2611 router:

interface Ethernet0/1 ip address 12.1.2.3 255.255.255.0 ip nat outside ! interface Ethernet0/0 ip address 192.168.101.1 255.255.255.0 ip nat inside ! ip nat inside source list 101 interface Ethernet0/1 overload ip nat inside source static tcp 192.168.101.2 1723 interface Ethernet0/1 1723 ! access-list 101 permit ip any any

In the above configuration, Ethernet 0/1 is connected to the public Internet with a static address of 12.1.2.3 and Ethernet 0/0 is connected to the inside network with a static address of 192.168.101.1. NAT outside is configured on E0/1 and NAT inside is configured on E0/0. Access-list 101 works in conjunction with the "ip nat inside source list 101 interface Ethernet0/1 overload" statement to permit all inside hosts to use E0/1 to connect to the Internet sharing whatever IP address is assigned to interface Ethernet E0/1.

The "overload" statement implements PAT (Port Address Translation) which makes that possible. (PAT allows multiple internal hosts to share single address on an external interface by appending different port numbers to each connection.)

The statement "ip nat inside source static tcp 192.168.101.2 1723 interface Ethernet0/1 1723" takes incoming port 1723 (PPTP) requests on Ethernet0/1 and forwards them to the VPN server located at 192.168.101.2.

You could do something similar with a Web server by changing port 1723 to port 80 or port 443. Here's what that would look like:

interface Ethernet0/1 ip address 12.1.2.3 255.255.255.0 ip nat outside ! interface Ethernet0/0 ip address 192.168.101.1 255.255.255.0 ip nat inside ! ip nat inside source list 101 interface Ethernet0/1 overload ip nat inside source static tcp 192.168.101.2 80 interface Ethernet0/1 80 ! access-list 101 permit ip any any

In this example, the web server is located at 192.168.101.2 and instead of forwarding PPTP (port 1723) traffic, we're forwarding HTTP (port 80) traffic.

Obviously, you can configure your Cisco router in a similar manner to forward nearly any type of traffic from an outside interface to an internal host.

About the Author

Don R. Crawley, CCNA-certified, is president and chief technologist at soundtraining.net (http://www.soundtraining.net), the Seattle training firm specializing in business skills and technical training for IT professionals. He works with IT pros to enhance their work, lives, and careers. For a free subscription to soundbytes, Don's 60-second e-zine for IT pros with musings, rants, and how-to guides, visit http://www.soundtraining.net/signup.cfm

Basic IT Infrastructure Investments That Cannot Be Ignored For An Acquired New Business

by Gabriel Ng

Introduction

In order to expand, most companies either grow organically or acquire new businesses. For newly acquired business, there will be a lot of groundwork need to be done to merge the acquired companies IT System to the purchaser company IT System. In IT Infrastructure areas, there are basic requirements that cannot be ignored especially if the new business is in another location or country. These requirements will assist in mitigating the risk of possible security threats from Internet such as trojans, viruses, and worms, hackers damaging business servers or worst unauthorized intrusion retrieving valuable data.

Basic IT Infrastructure investment includes:

a)Firewall

A proper firewall should have Packet filter, Stateful level protection, IPS, Anti-Spyware, Web Anti-Virus that acts as the first line of defense against any attacks, security threat from the Internet.

A Web-based firewall with easy secured configuration menu is preferred. Further, this is suitable for offices that are lack of dedicated local IT personnel. The HQ IT Experts can remotely assist in administering this firewall for the remote office. Remote administration should be via a secured HTTPS channel. Lookout for reputable firewalls that comes with built-in VPN, Web-based Application Filter (Proxy) Anti Virus and also Intrusion Protection.

b) Anti-Virus

To implement the first layer of anti-virus to protect the servers and PCs from harmful viruses, it will be advisable to setup a central Anti-Virus server in the HQ. This meant all acquired offices require are to install the Anti-Virus clients into their local servers and PCs. Management of the latest virus pattern file, scheduled scanning, and licence management will be centrally managed by HQ IT team using the central anti-virus Server.

Note: When your IT Infrastructure grows, it is better to place your servers in a proper Tier 3 or 4 Data Centre. These Data Centres often guarantees electrical and air-condition supply with a SLA agreement of 99.99%. If the HQ servers are not in a proper Data Centre, imagine a severe electrical outage may just cripple your main servers and also all your acquired companies and subsidiaries IT Systems.

c)E-Mail

Instead of investing ground up on an Industry standard communication software such as Lotus or Exchange E-Mail system, it will be advisable that the new acquired company also take advantage of your HQ E-Mail system. The acquired company only requires to install E-Mail clients and can start utilizing the e-mail for communication and data delivery (if required). The E-Mail system will also be administered centrally.

To mitigate risk further, HQ E-Mail system should be clustered for high-availability and comes with dual layer anti-virus systems, anti-spam and anti-relay mechanisms to mitigate risk of E-Mail viruses, spam and relay attacks.

d)Tape Backup System

To reduce the risk of not been able to recover data in the event of server or database failure, a proper tape backup should be implemented. It is recommended to use enterprise Backup Systems (e.g. CA, Veritas) software that comes with Open File Agent (allows to backup files that are currently still open), SQL Backup Agent (allows to backup database without shutting down the database). It will be prudent to conduct daily, weekly, monthly and yearly backups. Monthly and yearly backups should be kept off-site.

e) Telecommunication line

Option 1)

A WAN (Wide Area Network) link will provide a stable communication line given the provider will guarantee a minimum bandwidth. E-Mail replications, Business related application connections will be more predictable on a WAN line. As you have more subsidiaries and new acquired offices, you can leverage onyour numbers with your WAN provider for a better pricing and services. WAN links are costly but are stable and critical if your business relies on fast and reliable International connectivity.

Option 2)

Cost effective Internet lease line or broadband. This meant connection between the offices to HQ is via Internet. However, please note Internet connection is "best effort" where there is no guarantees of bandwidth or uptime. This is a cheaper solution that WAN.

For secure communication between the offices, I would recommend implementing VPN (Virtual Private Network) connections between these offices. This will facilitate encrypted communication between the offices.

These are basic measures that should be in place before allowing communications between these new offices and your HQ data servers. The impact is severe if security threats were to spread to your HQ and other offices from a new business via WAN or private lease lines.

About the Author

Gabriel Ng is a professional IT Security Consultant, IT Auditor (CISSP) and author of http://www.comsectutorial.com This site is setup to provide information, recommendation on hacking prevention, controls to minimise security threats from viruses, trojans, spywares, hacking based real life experience while conducting security assessment and penetration tests onsite in Asia, Europe and Africa.